Nightmares
by Esherymack
Summary: This is a crossover so minor that you probably won't even realize it, but all the same, is still a crossover. Takes place after Cross is attacked by Apocryphos. I think that if he had lived, as I still believe he is alive, he'd have some... issues. Attempted horror, micro-crossover with Devouring series. Cheers!


A/N: This was purely to try my hand at writing horror. Cross is so OOC here that it's not even funny. I have some… ideas… about what happened to Cross after the incident with Apocryphos (considering I don't think he's dead, just hiding). So I'm trying my hand at a touch of horror :3 Don't blame me for non-scary things, as I usually don't write this genre. Wish me luck, and please review when it's over :D

A minor crossover that is so minor that if I didn't tell you, you probably wouldn't realize it.

I rated it M for a reason. I don't want to particularly freak people out that don't want to be freaked out.

And ignore lowercases in inappropriate locations. I did that during dream sequences to give some sort of impression that it was a weird place.

_Italics are dream sequences. __**Bold italics are thoughts inside a dream sequence. **__Regular italics not in any large sort of paragraph (e.g. those not separated by lines) are merely thoughts. _Regular text is real time.

Disclaimer: Don't own D. Gray-man: it belongs to Katsura Hoshino.

* * *

_silence. _

_cold air pressed down onto his face. _

_Upon opening his eyes, Cross found velvety blackness. He reached one hand out, wincing as he felt his tired bones and aching muscles tearing at the undersides of his skin. It was if there were sharp-scaled snakes slithering and coiling around the bone, slicing the flesh._

_His hand collided with something smooth and cold, hardly a foot above his face. He realized the cold was all around him, pressing into his back and wrapping around his torso. He felt an unusual surge of fear, feeling the unusual shape of his prison._

_**A prison?**_

_**no. **_

_**A coffin…?**_

_**oh, God… save me now. **_

_Cross felt around, feeling the velvet turn hard. The air felt too thick, too heavy to breathe._

_Suddenly, the ice around him melted, and became scorching hot. He panicked, his heartbeat picking up as his breath constricted in his throat. The stink of burning hair filled his nose, even as he struggled to breathe, and the flesh of his back, his arms, his legs, and his face began to broil and melt off, emitting a greasy stench, that found in raw meat thrown flat on a hot iron. Cross pressed his hands against his face._

_**Make It Stop.**_

_**Make it Stop.**_

_**make it stop. **_

_His hands were not fleshed. Rather, bones, knobby and hard, pressed into the tortured burns on his face, where they stuck into the still-oozing skin. _

_Blood ran into his eyes and mouth. Forgetting his composure and pride, Cross collapsed against the walls of his flaming prison, screaming his throat raw…_

* * *

The burning coffin receded, and, still screaming, Cross found himself facing too much light. His face and arms still burned, as if the nightmare fire had injected into his veins.

Cross peeled his fingers from his eyes. The only thing he saw was dirt, crawling with centipedes and ants.

A moment passed, and Cross willed heartbeat to slow.

Cross took this moment to assess his location and present condition.

His shirt was in tatters. It lay over his chest in filthy torn strips. The leather that made up his pants, jacket, and boots was stuffed, and one pant leg was torn halfway up his leg. Blood crusted everything in a stiff cocoon.

Cross raised his gaze to the sky above him. Black branches cracked through a pale gray backdrop, the dim green leaves hanging limply from their limbs. A black raven eyed him, clicking its beak, before flying off into the forest with a loud scream.

Cross rolled over and pushed himself up onto his knees. His gloves were frayed and revealed dirt crusted under his nails, and two bruised lesions pointing at potentially broken fingers. Cross tried speaking, just to ensure himself that he could, but his throat was still tight, and his tongue swelled in his mouth like some sort of natural gag, preventing his speech.

His arms trembled and gave out.

Cross tried again, raising unsteadily onto his knees again.

_i'm so weak._

_i'm so small in this state. _

Cross finally recognized the pounding pain located in his face. He reached a ragged hand up and felt around the foreign contours of his cheek bones and jaw. The entire surface of the skin was covered in a still-wet slick of blood.

_There's so much blood._

Cross encountered a lump that was located where his eye should have been. He couldn't see his fingers.

His mind finally began to fire off questions.

_Where am I_

_What happened to me_

_Where did Judgment go_

Cross threw his mind outwards, searching for the gruff presence that was his Innocence. He found none.

He could not reach Maria, either.

Upon realizing he was utterly alone, Cross found himself shaking. He rose unsteadily to his feet. His legs screamed at him, but he ignored the pain and lurched off unsteadily into the forest growing darker by the moment.

As Cross walked, the darkness of the night now complete, he heard wolves howling in the distance and unknown monstrosities scuttling through the undergrowth.

He slumped against a tree, longing filling his mind. He ached for a cigarette and a large bottle of Romanée-Conti. Even more he ached to be back at the Black Order. He found it utterly ironic that he longed so much to be in a place he so hated, but at least it was far more comfortable than wherever he was at the moment.

He saw the very faint gray light around the edges of his one-eyed vision turn deep black, and all of the sudden, the forest in front of him receded again, and Cross found himself slipping into another nightmare.

* * *

_It was bright again._

_It was so bright again._

_Cross felt ice pressed against his face, pressing into his eye sockets and packing its way into his shirt and sleeves. He opened his eyes to see bright white powder. _

_**snow.**_

_**Why is there snow here.**_

_Something thudded into the snow beside his head, and Cross had to turn all the way around again in order to see whatever it was._

_He encountered a bright red skull, gleaming in the dim sunlight. A misconfigured white eyeball floated in one of its dark sockets. It was missing several teeth, and those that remained in their settings were stained brown and threatening to fall out. It was missing its jaw, but part of muscle that remained behind still hung on the joint. _

_The skull's one eye rolled forward, so that the iris was visible. It hopped up and down, a guttural moan emanating from it. _

_**That's not possible.**_

_**It's got no body.**_

_**It's not alive.**_

_Something growled behind his head again. Cross turned his head back again, to find his one working eye pressing into the deep golden coins that were they eyes of a hungry wolf. _

_Greasy, shaggy fur hung from the beast's thin, malnourished frame in reeking clumps. Its lips curled back, revealing black gums and yellow fangs that were like sharp, jagged knives. The stench of rotting meat rolled off of the thing's breath, and Cross gagged involuntarily. Blood oozed from between the yellowed fangs, tainted with oily ribbons of saliva and grease. _

_Cross began to try and struggle to his feet. The wolf stepped onto his neck, the sharp nails on its paw embedding themselves into the skin of his neck. Fresh red blood dripped onto the snow below Cross's face._

_The wolf leaned down and gazed even harder into Cross's one eye. "You shouldn't be here," it growled at him._

_Cross gasped in pain and shock as its fangs dug into his shoulder, ripping away a hunk of flesh. Cross felt the monster's fangs scraping his bone, and his shoulder was released. The wolf dropped the hunk of shoulder and then bit him again, its fangs shattering the bone. Cross screamed, his arm falling limp. He was still struggling to get away from the beast, when another bit into him. Cross did not stop struggling, his body being torn to shreds as he struggled. _

_The last part left by the wolves was Cross's face._

* * *

The nightmare slipped away, and Cross was faced with daylight.

_God… what's happening to me._

_Why am I having so many nightmares._

Cross's eye faded into and out of focus. Cross frowned as the trees became blobs of black and green, and then returned to trees again.  
The foliage had begun to look like monsters, haggard and crooked, with dust and mold caked in between the dark crags of the bark.

One of the trees scrabbled forwards, and morphed into a corpse. It began to drag itself forwards on its torn nails and broken fingers, pulling its emancipated self towards Cross. The corpse latched onto Cross's boot, and Cross felt the tugs that it made as its torn digits dug into the tortured leather of his Order jacket. Cross scrambled back, fear clogging his throat for the third time in a row.

Something hit his shoulder, and Cross turned to see a large beetle sinking pincers into the front of his shoulder. Cross shouted and hit it away from him, and it came back with similar ferocity. Cross jumped, jamming it under his boot and holding it down. His shoulder throbbed, and Cross touched it to pull his fingers away covered in even more sticky blood.

Suddenly, the moaning corpse swung at him, its claw like hand connecting with the side of his face. Others had joined him, standing tall and lean a bit behind the first.

_They're here to kill me. They're here to make me pay for my crimes, all those years ago._

Cross screamed.

He screamed, and screamed, and screamed.

* * *

Allen shouted and fell to his knees in front of his master. The general was leaning against a tree, the side of his face where his mask had been swollen and covered in blood. Cross's eye was missing from his face, the wound originating right where the bullet hole was located on his mask.

Allen grabbed his master's shoulders, and called for Kanda, Lenalee, Lavi, and Bookman. The five of them had been sent out that morning in order to attempt to find Marian Cross—or rather, his corpse- after he had been attacked. The attack had looked very much like a suicide.

As Allen was slowly pulling Cross to his feet, Cross swatted at his hands, mumbling incoherently. "Master, it's me. It's Allen," Allen said, slowly and clearly. Timcampy flew from the forest behind Allen, and upon seeing Cross, had latched onto his shoulder.

Cross smacked Tim off of his shoulder, saying something about beetles and corpses. When Tim tried to get back up, Cross actually stepped on the golem, and as Lenalee, Kanda, and Lavi appeared behind Allen from the dense forest, Cross fell to the ground, screaming. Allen looked at Bookman worriedly.

"Allen," Bookman said coolly. "I do believe that your master may very well have been driven insane."

No one noticed the black shadow lurking in the trees, a dark, twisted smile on its face, as it stared at Cross and pressed memories and fears into his mind. A wisp of black smoke drifted out from between its teeth.

Exorcists, and particularly, Generals, were much more fun than _ordinary _humans.

* * *

A/N: I realized by the end it was a very minor crossover. Has anyone ever read the Devouring series, by Simon Holt? Right at the end there, the 'shadow' was a Vour :D


End file.
